We are all protoplasm. The
difference between humans and flatworms is the size of our petri dishes.
But, enough of that.

There is a growing movement around the world against genetically modified
food. Those in the movement want the things they eat to be pure and
the way nature made them. Some activists in this movement have taken
to adding the prefix "Franken" to genetically modified foods.
Thus, we have Frankentomatoes, Frankencorn, Frankenjustabouteverything.
To make these Franken foods, scientists artificially insert genes for
various qualities into vegetables that don't normally possess these
genetic qualities.

In
a broadening of the use of the term "Franken" this prefix
was also applied by some people to the dog that attacked and killed
San Franciscan Diane Whipple a couple of years ago. You may recall the
story. Whipple was returning to her apartment when a dog, owned by a
couple who lived in her building, attacked and killed her. The story
had legs mainly because the owners of the dog got it from reported white
supremacists who had bred and trained it. However, no scientific insertion
of genes took place. From all reports, it seems that this dog was bred
the old fashioned low tech way, which is to say, uh, doggy style. Nevertheless,
some in the press tried to create a Nazi superman/superdog angle, where
it probably didn't exist, and this kept the story alive for a couple
of weeks even though dog breeding has been conducted for centuries by
people in all parts of society and of all political persuasions.

The
dog that killed Ms. Whipple was a 123 pound cross between an English
mastiff and a Canary Island dog. English mastiffs often weigh as much
as 200 pounds and stand almost 3 feet tall when on all fours, but they're
not considered very smart. When you hear the Shakespearean expression
"loose the dogs of war," you're usually hearing about English
Mastiffs which were bred originally to protect castles in England and
to accompany armies. The Canary Island Dog is smaller than the English
Mastiff and weighs about 105 pounds. However, it is nearly as tall as
the English Mastiff. It is also considered to be smarter than the English
Mastiff. The thought behind the breeding was apparently that if you
bred these two, you'd end up with a very large and powerful dog with
pretty good dog smarts.

Of course, you may end up with just the opposite or
some other variation. There's an old joke, maybe true, maybe not, that
a famous and attractive, but not remarkably intelligent woman was once
reported to have said to Albert Einstein, "Albert we should have
children together. With my looks and your brains, we'll have great looking,
smart kids. Einstein is reported to have replied "What if it goes
the other way?"

The Los Angeles Times, apparently trying to scratch a little beneath
the surface about the Whipple killing, ran an article titled "Crossbreeding
Creates Danger." In the article, we read "Breeders say the
problem is not any particular breed, but the effects of crossbreeding....You
start mixing things and you lose stability." One breeder then says
"This dog is obviously a genetic nightmare." Of course, this
type of statement runs counter to the genetic gobbledygook served up
to young children in various cartoons and films where blended, but always
smart and noble, mongrel dogs and cats are the heroes. You know the
formula. The street dog or alley cat outsmarts the snooty owners of
a purebred dog or cat and the two "fall in love" (well, they're
for kids, after all). The final scene is often frolicking mongrel puppies
or kittens. Some of the puppies or kittens bear a resemblance to the
father and some to the mother and some are a mixture. None of them are
so evil as to be purebred, however. Fade to black. What do impressionable
young children take away in their subconscious minds from such cartoons
and films? Right. Fade to black.

Let's change just two words ala a little verbal algebra, and see how
the above statement from breeders sounds. "Breeders say the problem
is not any particular race, but the effects of crossbreeding....You
start mixing things and you lose stability." One breeder then says
"This human is obviously a genetic nightmare."

Although human breeding follows the same natural laws as dog breeding,
few people are honest enough to admit that we should use as much care
in human breeding as we do in dog breeding. Most people, if asked, would
probably say that humans are different and should just mate based on
"love.". Of course they would never permit their purebred
dogs to mate in such a haphazard fashion. One reason for human reluctance
to breed to improve the line is because of the bad taste left by eugenics
and forced sterilization. Another reason is that some humans think that
they are somehow above the laws of nature. Just below the Angels. Not
really animals. Not at all like, oh, chimps, for example.

Hold
on. News reports this week indicate that Morris Goodman, a genetic researcher
at the School of Medicine at Wayne State University in Michigan, believes
that chimpanzees should be added to the genus Homo which now only has
one member--humans. Goodman's idea is to have three species fill the
Homo genus. These would be Homo sapiens, Homo troglodytes (common chimps)
and Homo paniscus (bonobo chimps). The reason that this makes sense
is that chimps and humans share 99.4% of the same DNA. So, .6% of our
DNA has kept us from being short hairy critters with long arms and bad
manners. Don't let any race deniers tell you that we should emphasize
the things we all have in common and forgot about tiny differences.
There are no "tiny" genetic differences.

While scientists may be thinking of adding more Homos at the genus level
by putting like with like, they might also consider separating like
from unlike at the species level and start using better terminology
with Homo sapiens as well. Doesn't it seem just a little absurd that
all several billion humans are considered to be of the same species
and that some people are now saying that race doesn't exist, when our
own eyes and our science tell us that there are fairly distinct groups
of humans who are very different from other fairly distinct groups of
humans and that these fairly distinct groups are-- just what our eyes
tell us--different, and can be logically grouped together in what we
usually call races? An important aspect of science is to classify things,
including living things, so we can better understand them. Why should
humans not be subject to correct classifications?

Today, "race" is taking a lot of hits from
blenders who continue with their race denying in order to break down
resistance to the blending away of distinct races. They figure you're
a racist if you believe your own eyes about differences in skin color,
hair type and texture, bone structure, and many other physical differences
as well as scientifically proven differences that require special equipment
to determine, or if you believe the statistics about different crime
rates, I.Q. scores, school performance, and other things that point
back to mental differences. Many of these deniers come to their ignorance
from a religious bias, and reason, consciously or subconsciously, that
the "real" person is the "soul" or "spirit
within the flesh," and this soul or spirit is raceless. Thus, race
isn't important. Thus, race doesn't exist. Others come to their bias
with various quasi-scientific rationales based on incomplete or false
information about genes. Still others come to their bias from a belief
that if you deny differences, the differences won't exist.

Can it be, in contrast to what the race deniers are trying to sell,
that not only is race a reality, but that the correct term for race
really should be "species" or "sub-species"? The
problem in terminology is an old one. The main reason that all humans
are lumped together as one species is because they can interbreed. Could
it be that this reliance on the ability to interbreed to determine a
species is wrong? We know that lower animals of different species can
and do mate and have offspring, and that many of these animals are often
even more genetically disparate from each other than are human races
different from one another. Yet, no scientist worth his salt claims
that these animals are of the same species simply because they can have
viable offspring. So, if very different lower animals can have viable
offspring, isn't this at least a clue that the ability to interbreed
or not interbreed should not be the defining characteristic of a species?
Trust your senses to tell you the truth. Apart from cases of animal
and plant mimicry, a general rule of existence is that if something
looks different, it probably is different.

Nature has given all animals sense organs so that they
can survive to breed and replicate themselves and struggle to improve
and make their kind the dominant kind. Generally speaking, nature isn't
about cooperation and getting along. It is about constant change. All
living things are nothing more than the result of the natural evolution
of inert chemicals. Nature's endless experimenting with a chemistry
set. Some experiments work, some don't. Some experiments work for a
time, only to be discarded as some new model evolves. We can see, hear,
smell, touch, and taste things in our environment precisely so that
we can survive to breed true and pass on our genes. When we start to
override our senses and deny what these senses tell us about something
as basic to us as knowing who is US, and who is not US, we run into
trouble. And, humans are, indeed, running into trouble because they
are overriding their senses and can't seem to distinguish between what
is acceptable and desirable to override and what isn't.

The race-deniers and blenders don't want people to notice that nature
has color coded people and that while there are individual differences,
people who share many primary racial characteristics that are easily
seen--such as skin color--are usually of one group composed of genetically
similar people--a family, an extended family, a tribe, a race--and all
those with different characteristics are usually of a different group
whose members are genetically similar to each other in many important
ways.

If
you don't believe there are racial differences between the very different
peoples on this planet, you may be on your way to changing your family's
racial characteristics forever. You may wish to consider whether or
not your understanding of what this really means is scientifically correct
or whether you've just bought into the cartoon version of reality that
uses dogs and cats as metaphors for humans and where the mongrels are
seen as better than those that aren't mongrels.

As human beings, we have a certain amount of choice to determine what
we wish to become, but this choice is often manipulated by those who
want us to act in certain ways. Knowing that this manipulation exists,
it behooves us all--no matter what race we belong to--to carefully consider
our mating choices, because they will determine the future of our families.

# # #

TWO ICONOCLASTIC BOOKS BY H. MILLARD!
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